NSF CAREER Award for Prof. Shalene Jha

Shalene Jha, an assistant professor in the Section of Integrative Biology, will use her funding to develop the first spatially and temporally explicit population model for native pollinators, specifically bees, in a human-altered landscape.

The program will also be carried out through a synergistic integration of research and teaching activities with UT’s Environmental Science Institute (ESI), including enhanced undergraduate involvement in the lab and field, collaboration with K-12 teachers, development of a graduate-level course in landscape genetics, and a series of public outreach seminars and workshops.

The proposed research aims to bridge the knowledge gap between pollinator population and movement biology to yield a comparative study of pollinator population dynamics, gene flow patterns, and foraging ecology across species and landscapes. The broader application of this project is the development of mechanistically-informed conservation strategies for the preservation of pollinators and their critical role as ecosystem service providers.